Inside the final month of Buttigieg’s historic campaign

Pete Buttigieg speaking at a fundraiser in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Lorie Shaull, https://flic.kr/p/2fLQy9e)

Pete Buttigieg opened February by sharing victory with one of the Democratic Party’s best-known figures and ended it with a humbling defeat at the hands of another.

Yet Buttigieg’s unlikely path over the last 30 days exceeded virtually everyone’s expectations of his presidential ambitions, except perhaps his own. The former mayor of Indiana’s fourth largest city, an openly gay 38-year-old whose name most voters still can’t pronounce, formally suspended his White House bid Sunday night.

Buttigieg did so acknowledging he no longer had a viable path to the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, even after finishing in the top four in each of the first four contests of the 2020 primary season.